The Bonfire of the Vanities (61 page)

“Whadda they worrying about? The fucking TV viruses got him standing out there in the rain for a fucking half an hour. Look at him. Looks like he crawled in here through a pipe.”

Goldberg chuckled. Then, so as not to offend Sherman, he said to him, “You’re not looking your best. You
know
that.”

His only friends! Sherman wanted to cry, and all the more so because this horrible, pathetic feeling was genuine.

“Can’t do it,” said the Angel. “Gotta do the whole routine.” He closed his eyes and lifted his chin again. “You can take the cuffs off.”

Martin looked at Sherman and twisted his mouth to one side. (Well, friend, we tried.) Goldberg unlocked the handcuffs and took them off Sherman’s wrists. There were white rings on his wrists where the metal had been. The veins on top of his hands were engorged with blood.
My blood pressure has gone through the roof
. There were Styrofoam peanuts all over his pants. Martin handed him his soggy jacket. Styrofoam peanuts all over the soggy jacket, too.

“Empty your pockets and hand me the contents,” said the Angel.

On the advice of Killian, Sherman hadn’t brought much with him. Four $5 bills, about a dollar in change, a key to the apartment, a handkerchief, a ballpoint pen, his driver’s license—for some reason he thought he should have identification. As he handed over each item, the Angel described it aloud—“twenty dollars in bills,” “one silver ballpoint pen”—and handed it to someone Sherman couldn’t see.

Sherman said, “Can I…keep the handkerchief?”

“Let me see it.”

Sherman held it up. His hand was shaking terribly.

“Yeah, you can keep it. But you gotta give me the watch.”

“It’s only—it’s just a cheap watch,” said Sherman. He held up his hand. The watch had a plastic case and a nylon band. “I don’t care what happens to it.”

“No can do.”

Sherman undid the band and surrendered the little watch. A new spasm of panic went through him.

“Please,” said Sherman. As soon as the word left his mouth, he knew he shouldn’t have said it. He was begging. “How can I figure—can’t I keep the watch?”

“You got an appointment or something?” The Angel attempted a smile to show he didn’t mean it as much more than a pleasantry. But he didn’t return the watch. Then he said, “Okay, and I need your belt and your shoestrings.”

Sherman stared at him. He realized his mouth was open. He looked at Martin. Martin was looking at the Angel. Now Martin closed his eyes and lifted his chin, the way the Angel had, and said, “Oh boy.” (They really
do
have it in for him.)

Sherman unbuckled the belt and pulled it out of the loops. As soon as he did, the pants fell down around his hips. He hadn’t worn the tweed suit in a long time, and the waist was much too big. He pulled the pants up and stuffed his shirt back inside, and they fell down again. He had to hold them up in front. He squatted down to take off the shoelaces. Now he was an abject creature crouched at the feet of Martin and Goldberg. His face was close to the Styrofoam peanuts on his pants. He could see the crinkles on them. Some sort of horrible beetles or parasites! The heat of his body and the woolly funk of the pants gave off an unpleasant odor. He was aware of the humid smell of his armpits under the clammy shirt. A total mess. No two ways about it. He had the feeling that one of them, Martin, Goldberg, the Angel, would just step on him, and,
pop
, that would be the end of that. He pulled out the shoestrings and stood up. Standing up from the crouch made him lightheaded. For an instant he thought he might faint. His pants were falling down again. He pulled them up with one hand and handed the Angel the shoestrings with the other. They were like two little dried dead things.

The voice behind the desk said, “Two brown shoestrings.”

“Okay, Angel,” said Martin, “all yours.”

“Right,” said the Angel.

“Well, good luck, Sherman,” said Goldberg, smiling in a kindly fashion.

“Thanks,” said Sherman. It was horrible. He actually appreciated it.

He heard a cell door slide open. Down the little corridor stood three police officers herding a group of Latins out of one cell and into the one next to it. Sherman recognized several of the men who had been in line ahead of him outside.

“All right, knock it off, and get in there.”

“¡Mira! ¡Mira!”

One man remained in the corridor. A policeman had him by the arm. He was tall, with a long neck, and his head lolled about. He seemed very drunk. He was muttering to himself. Then he threw his eyes to the heavens and screamed, “
¡Mira!
” He was holding up his pants the same way Sherman was.

“Hey, Angel, whadda I do with this one? It’s all over his
pants
!” The policeman said “
pants
” with great disgust.

“Well, shit,” said the Angel. “Take the pants off him and
bury
’em, and then wash him off, too, and give him some a those green fatigues.”

“I don’t even wanna touch him, Sarge. You got any a those things they take the cans off the shelf in the supermarket with?”

“Yeah, I got some,” said the Angel, “and I’m gonna take your can off.”

The policeman jerked the tall man back toward the first cell. The tall man’s legs were like a marionette’s.

The Angel said, “Whaddaya got all over
your
pants?”

Sherman looked down. “I don’t know,” he said. “They were on the back seat of the car.”

“Whose car?”

“Detective Martin’s car.”

The Angel shook his head as if now he had seen everything. “Okay, Tanooch, take him over to Gabsie.”

A young white officer took Sherman by the elbow. Sherman’s hand was holding up his pants, and so the elbow came up like a bird’s wing. His pants were damp even in the waistband. He carried his wet jacket over his other arm. He started walking. His right foot came out of his shoe, because the strings were gone. He stopped, but the policeman kept walking, jerking his elbow forward in an arc. Sherman put his foot back in the shoe, and the policeman motioned toward the little corridor. Sherman started shuffling, so that his feet wouldn’t come out of the shoes. The shoes made a squishing sound because they were so wet.

Sherman was led toward the cubicle with the big windows. Now, just across the corridor, he could see inside the two cells. In one there appeared to be a dozen figures, a dozen hulks of gray and black, up against the walls. The door to the other was open. There was only one person inside, the tall man, slumped on a ledge. There was a brown mess on the floor. The odor of excrement was overpowering.

The policeman steered Sherman into the cubicle with the windows. Inside was a huge freckled policeman with a wide face and blond wavy hair, who looked him up and down. The policeman called Tanooch said, “McCoy,” and handed the big one a sheet of paper. The room seemed full of metal stands. One looked like the sort of metal-detection gate you see at airports. There was a camera on a tripod. There was something that looked like a music stand except that it had nothing at the top big enough to hold a page of music.

“Okay, McCoy,” said the big policeman, “step through that gate there.”

Squish, squish, squish…holding his pants up with one hand and holding his wet jacket in the other, Sherman shuffled through the gate. A loud whining beep came from the machine.

“Whoa, whoa,” said the policeman. “Okay, give me your coat.”

Sherman handed him the jacket. The man went through the pockets and then began kneading the jacket from top to bottom. He threw the jacket over the edge of a table.

“Okay, spread your feet and put your arms straight out to the side, like this.”

The policeman put his arms out as if he were doing a swan dive. Sherman stared at the policeman’s right hand. He was wearing a translucent rubber surgical glove. It came halfway up his forearm!

Sherman spread his feet. When he spread his arms, his pants fell way down. The man approached him and began patting down his arms, his chest, his ribs, his back and then his hips and his legs. The hand with the rubber glove created an unpleasant dry friction. A new wave of panic…He stared at the glove in terror. The man looked at him and grunted, apparently in amusement, and then held up his right hand. The hand and the wrist were enormous. The hideous rubber glove was right in front of Sherman’s face.

“Don’t worry about the glove,” he said. “The thing is, I gotta do your prints, and I gotta pick your fingers up one by one and put ’em on the pad…You understand?…” His tone was conversational, neighborly, as if there were just the two of them, out by the alley, and he was explaining how the engine in his new Mazda worked. “I do this all day, and I get the ink on my hands, and my skin’s rough to begin with, and sometimes I don’t get the ink all off, and I go home, and my wife has the whole living room done in white, and I put my hand down on the sofa or someplace, and I get up and you can see three or four fingers on the sofa, and my wife throws a fit.” Sherman stared at him. He didn’t know what to say. This huge fierce-looking man wanted to be liked. It was all so very odd. Perhaps they all wanted to be liked.

“Okay, walk on back through the gate.”

Sherman shuffled back through the gate, and the alarm went off again.

“Shit,” said the man. “Try it again.”

The alarm went off a third time.

“Beats the hell outta me,” said the man. “Wait a minute. Come here. Open your mouth.”

Sherman opened his mouth.

“Keep it open…Wait a minute, turn it this way. Can’t get no light.” He wanted to move Sherman’s head to a strange angle. Sherman could smell the rubber of the glove. “Sonofabitch. You got a goddamn silver mine in there. I tell you what. Bend over at the waist like this. Try to get way down.”

Sherman bent over, holding up his pants with one hand.
Surely he wouldn’t—

“Now back through the gate, but real slow.”

Sherman started shuffling backward, bent over at an almost 90-degree angle.

“Okay, real slow, real slow, real slow—that’s it…whoa!”

Sherman was now mostly through the gate. Only his shoulders and his head remained on the other side.

“Okay, back up…a little farther, a little farther, little farther, little farther…”

The alarm went off again.

“Whoa! Whoa! Right there! Stay right there!” The alarm remained on.

“Sonofabitch!” said the big man. He began pacing around and sighing. He slapped his legs with his hands. “I had one a these last year. Okay, you can stand up.”

Sherman stood up. He looked at the big man, bewildered. The man stuck his head out the door and yelled, “Hey, Tanooch! Come here! Look at this!”

Across the little corridor, a policeman was in the open cell with a hose, washing down the floor. The rush of the water echoed off the tile.

“Hey, Tanooch!”

The policeman who had brought Sherman into the room came from down the corridor.

“Look at this, Tanooch.” Then he said to Sherman, “Okay, bend over and do that again. Back through the gate, real slow.”

Sherman bent over and did as he was told.

“Okay, whoa, whoa, whoa…Now you see that, Tanooch? So far, nothing. Okay, now back up a little more, little more, little more…” The alarm went off. The big man was beside himself again. He paced about and sighed and put his hands together. “Dja see that, Tanooch! It’s his
head!
Swear to Christ!…It’s the fellow’s head!…Okay, stand up. Open your mouth…That’s it. No, turn it this way.” He moved Sherman’s head again, to get more light. “Look in there! You wanna see some metal?”

The one called Tanooch said not a word to Sherman. He looked in his mouth, like someone inspecting a crawl space in a cellar.

“Jesus Christ,” said Tanooch. “You’re right. Set a teeth look like a change maker.” Then he said to Sherman, as if noticing him for the first time, “They ever let you on a airplane?”

The big one cracked up over this. “You’re not the only one,” he said. “I had one like you last year. Drove me outta my mind. I couldn’t figure out
…what da fuck…
you know?” Suddenly it was the casual fellow-out-back-on-Saturday mode of conversation again. “This machine is very sensitive, but you do have a whole head fulla metal, I gotta tell you that.”

Sherman was mortified, completely humiliated. But what could he do? Maybe these two, if he played along with them, could keep him out of
…the pens!
With
those people!
Sherman just stood there, holding up his pants.

“What’s that stuff all over your pants?” asked Tanooch.

“Styrofoam,” said Sherman.

“
Styrofoam
,” said Tanooch, nodding his head, but in an uncomprehending fashion. He left the room.

Then the big man stood Sherman in front of a metal stand and took two pictures of him, one from the front and one from the side. It dawned on Sherman that this was what was known as a mug shot. This great huge bear had just taken his mug shot, while Sherman stood there holding up his pants. He led him over to a counter and took Sherman’s fingers one by one and pressed them into an ink pad and then rolled them onto a printed form. It was a surprisingly rough operation. He gripped each of Sherman’s fingers as if he were picking up a knife or a hammer and plunged it into the ink pad. Then he apologized.

“You have to do all the work yourself,” he said to Sherman. “You can’t expect nobody comes in here to lift a goddamned finger for you.”

From across the corridor came the furious sound of someone retching. Three of the Latins were at the bars of the pen.

“Ayyyyyy!” yelled one of them. “The man puking! He puking plenty!”

Tanooch was the first policeman there.

“Oh, f’r Chrissake. Oh, beautiful. Hey, Angel! This guy’s a one-man garbage barge. Whaddaya wanna do?”

“He the same one?” said the Angel.

Then the smell of vomit began to spread.

“Ayyyyyyyy, whaddaya whaddaya,” said the Angel. “Hose it down and leave ’im in there.”

They opened the bars, and two policemen stood by outside while a third went inside with the hose. The prisoners hopped this way and that, to keep from getting wet.